What makes a good character?

In the review or criticism of an FF game one will invariably come across the writer's view of the main character, the love interest or another character they especially loved/hated.
The main character seems to get it the worst...people didn't like Cloud and Squall because they were too moody. People didn't like Zidane and Tidus because they were too jolly.
Characters like Rosa, Lenna and Aerith were seen as too 'damsel in distress', whereas Tifa, Lightning and Ashe were too 'tough and stoic'. Rinoa and Garnet are 'whiney'.
Then of course you get the inevitable "Selphie/Rikku/Vanille was sooo annoying omg" and so it goes on.
This whittles down the characters to a precious few in the games that are universally popular.
I find that in recent games you can 'tell' what a character is going to be like even before playing the game, just by looking at their picture. I'll use 13 as an example:

Lightning: typical tough chick. Moody and doesn't say much.
Snow: jolly, loud, upbeat guy.
Vanille: giggly, happy, cheerful chick.
Hope: awkward, angsty teenage boy.
Fang: Tough chick #2, but she's smiling so make her touch chick with possibly dry humour.
Sazh: Token cheerful black guy who always has something witty to say.

Sounds about right :roll2
Not saying that Square have never been guilty of creating character stereotypes, but they seem to be making much 'simpler' characters than they used to.

So what in your opinion makes a good character? Is it their initial deposition (quiet, loud, upbeat or stoic), their development, their relationships or even their appearance?

haha what u say about the FF13 characters totaly fits ^^

what makes a good character? i think all of those things u said

when i dont like the character (also in apearance) than i cant play nicely..
Like Darksiders... i didnt like the main character so i didnt had an urge to play any further...
though i also dislike 'hack and slash', the main character rlly beated the fun out of it for me.

The same with those typical World War games...
at those games yr always 'private nr 16' .. u dnt have a face, and u dnt rlly have a name. i dnt like that

For me a character needs a name, a face and a personality!!

A good backstory is all they need in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Tokimadoushi

In the review or criticism of an FF game one will invariably come across the writer's view of the main character, the love interest or another character they especially loved/hated.
The main character seems to get it the worst...people didn't like Cloud and Squall because they were too moody. People didn't like Zidane and Tidus because they were too jolly.
Characters like Rosa, Lenna and Aerith were seen as too 'damsel in distress', whereas Tifa, Lightning and Ashe were too 'tough and stoic'. Rinoa and Garnet are 'whiney'.
Then of course you get the inevitable "Selphie/Rikku/Vanille was sooo annoying omg" and so it goes on.
This whittles down the characters to a precious few in the games that are universally popular.
I find that in recent games you can 'tell' what a character is going to be like even before playing the game, just by looking at their picture. I'll use 13 as an example:

Lightning: typical tough chick. Moody and doesn't say much.
Snow: jolly, loud, upbeat guy.
Vanille: giggly, happy, cheerful chick.
Hope: awkward, angsty teenage boy.
Fang: Tough chick #2, but she's smiling so make her touch chick with possibly dry humour.
Sazh: Token cheerful black guy who always has something witty to say.

Sounds about right :roll2
Not saying that Square have never been guilty of creating character stereotypes, but they seem to be making much 'simpler' characters than they used to.

So what in your opinion makes a good character? Is it their initial deposition (quiet, loud, upbeat or stoic), their development, their relationships or even their appearance?

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People liked Zidane and Cloud. They did. They used up their luck with Cloud over the followed decade and a half but when the game came out he was the ****.

Tidus and Vaan are really the only main characters that were straight up disliked by Western audiences riht out of the gates. Why? Well in Tidus' case, it was because he was whiny. And I'm not complaining, that's just how it is. He was very unaccepting of being thrust in a new world (which is the opposite of what you want out of your point of view character, regardless of whether it was understandable), he spend a great amount of time complaining to Auron about stuff and the character Auron made damn sure Tidus' attidute was perceived as negative.

Negative characters are mostly the people characters dislike, it's natural to prefer characters that like adventures because that's what started the game up to do. Alternatively you can have a negative character that still fights of his own volition (Squall and Cloud maybe stoic but they fight for money, that goes a long way).

Vaan I suppose just didn't fit in with the setting. Now I'm not part of the fanbase that think he never did anything, Ashe warmed up to him because he had the same visions as hers, but it became clear that Vaan didn't have the same lust for netcite that she did which is why the Occuria stopped showing him said visions, but it was too late and Vaan changed Ashe for the better and thus saved the world. But all the same, XII had a political plot, and Vaan was anything but. Byond that he didn'thave wole lot of "I'm awesome" moments and the bad voice actor. Plus DEM ABS.

As for what I think makes a good character? Character interaction. Every character in a plot should have a distinct opinion of every other character in the plot ad ther interaction needs to unique. That makes them more fleshed out then cardboard cut outs of a certain character type.

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Originally Posted by Remon

A good backstory is all they need in my opinion.

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Excellent :)

A character needs to fit in well and be significant to the story being told. I couldn't care less if a character is 'emo', 'jolly' or 'too moody' or whatever it is players seem to be turned off by these days just by virtue of it existing. As long as the motivation and actions of the character are solid and consistent with the fiction in which they exist, then I'm game.

In general I feel most FF games have pretty solid casts. Of the story-driven titles, I think IV, VI and VII are shining examples of how to do a proper cast. There are, of course, some instances in these games where a player would wish certain characters would get more screen-time, but in general there is very little left wanting from the casts as a whole.

VIII is a bit iffy, and to a lesser extent IX is, too. In VIII, there are several characters that seem to exist to fill out the idea that Squall and his team are new graduates from mercenary school, but none of them actually bring anything interesting or provide any kind of twists to the plot. IX is less iffy in this sense, but I think the main four characters were more than enough to keep the story going - everyone else seems to show up and then fade into the background.

X is a bit tighter as far as characters go. This is one of the reasons why I occasionally feel like picking up X - unlike the previous two games, it doesn't feel like the writers outright forgot about the characters they've been telling us about for so many hours. XII and XIII are effective, too, but I don't have much else to say about them since I haven't played XII since 2007 and XIII is a game I've been actively trying to forget about since May.

Personality is largely irrelevant to a good character. It's whether or not there's a reason for them to act that way and whether or not that reason is believable. In this sense there are a lot of characters that fall far short of the mark.

I think Yuffie is an example of a decent character. (Just an example I plucked out of the air.) She's distrustful and aggressive because her homeland was invaded and its greatness diminished (by ShinRa no less). She acts bouncy and hyperactive to cover up her insecurities about not being strong enough to please her father, and not being strong enough to help her village (a burden she places on herself).

You make a good point, Jiro. I've found that people dislike characters like Yuffie because of her lively, rather obnoxious personality, and are quick to file her under 'annoying' or 'stereotypical' without actually stopping to think why she acts that way.

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Originally Posted by Jiro

I think Yuffie is an example of a decent character. (Just an example I plucked out of the air.) She's distrustful and aggressive because her homeland was invaded and its greatness diminished (by ShinRa no less). She acts bouncy and hyperactive to cover up her insecurities about not being strong enough to please her father, and not being strong enough to help her village (a burden she places on herself).

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I was going to mention Yuffie in my own post, too. You've covered my thoughts rather nicely. I think the minor Wutai-Shinra War sub-plot is one of the most interesting in the whole series!

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I think the minor Wutai-Shinra War sub-plot is one of the most interesting in the whole series

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Shhh, don't give them ideas, they might make another VII compilation about it :roll2

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Originally Posted by Tokimadoushi

You make a good point, Jiro. I've found that people dislike characters like Yuffie because of her lively, rather obnoxious personality, and are quick to file her under 'annoying' or 'stereotypical' without actually stopping to think why she acts that way.

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I disagree, I feel that even having a good justification does not change the likability of a character. I understand why Yuffie is the way she is, but it doesn't change the fact I hate her with a burning passion. The same can be said of Yuna in FFX and Vanille in XIII. Hell, everyone knows Hope has one of the more sympathetic stories in XIII but it hasn't stopped half the fanbase from hating the whiny little brat. So despite having a good personality or backstory, I still believe there is a level of subjectivity that is also crucial.

I would even argue that personality is actually more important than backstory, cause if you can't stand the character, it wouldn't matter how awesome their backstory is, you would still dislike them. Vincent and Garnet come to mind for me personally. They both have interesting back stories, but I still find them both grating after awhile as characters cause they have certain personality flaws I can't stand. Backstory just makes a likable character even better. Now granted, some backstory is necessary. You can have a great personality, but if you come across as irrelevant to the plot, nothing is going to save you.

My point is a character with a great personality and a minor back story is more important than an annoying/boring/two-dimensional character with a fleshed out backstory.

I always disagreed with people about the characters in XIII. To me, there a few things that make characters come alive (personality, history, etc.), but in XIII's case it was the interaction. The dynamic between the characters was just really, really powerful and moving to me. They were the first characters in the history of the game to make decisions based on their feelings toward the others. Instead of all moving on together, they split up on several occasions when their own personal goals demanded they do so. Hell, that angsty teen wanted to kill Snowe--I'm pretty sure nothing like that has ever happened before, at least within the context of the series. And almost everyone else had a reason to hate--or at least strongly dislike--one of the others, too. Yeah, they were token trade-offs of past characters, but the dynamic between them all was one of the most special in the series. I guess I was one of the few people who really liked it. lol

As long as they don't feel like the Ace Attorney witness of the day, then I'm okay.

A good back story, good character design, as in how they look, move (Like in X onwards) and speak, how they fight in battle, their significance to the plot and, most importantly, how they tie all of these things together.

I cannot stress enough how good a character Tidus is. He may have been whiny, but it worked with regards to the game and nothing seemed out of character about him. If you had been taken from your world where you were a blitzball star and thrust into a world where you have a freaking monster like Sin and weird creatures like Hypellos, you'd be whiny too.

Squall (and the whole of VIII's cast, except for Seifer) was terrible. Instead of fleshing out a group of individual characters, they just used the typical high school setting and put the typical anime personalities on them. Squall's the troubled emo kid, Zell's the goofy loud mouth, Quistis (I always forget how to spell his name) is the serious type, Selphie's the annoying dittzy one, Irvine was the lady's man and Rinoa was just simply the persistent love interest. Seifer, as good a character as he was, is just simply the main character's rival. The whole (SPOILER)GF making them forget they were childhood friends gives the characters NO interesting backstory IMO.

If i dont like the character, than i dont like the game...
thats one of the reasons wy i hate those World War 2 games.
the character(s) u play are so anonymous... ur just Private Nr 6...
no real name, no face..
and becaus of that i dnt feel like my character is those game are important.. there just another soldier in the war

Humour usually does the trick!

How is Squall troubled? IMO until he meets Rinoa he has his :bou::bou::bou::bou: together more than most FF characters. This is more a case of you wanting to project a typical anime personality on him.

its all a mather of taste at the end...
Some like serious characters, and some prefer the goofy ones

Despite taste I think there is still a matter of good and poor writing. For instance I dislike the style of all the FF9 characters, but despite my low initial impression of all of them I grew to appreciate them.

Ofcourse its a mather of good and poor writing, but im just saying: a character can be writen sooooooooo good, but (for instant) if u dont like his/her silly character it can ruin the whole thing

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Originally Posted by Rosie

I disagree, I feel that even having a good justification does not change the likability of a character.

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Whether or not you like them doesn't really affect whether they're a good character or not. :p "Good" is a relatively objective term, whereas "likeable" is going to be subjective. The only time likeable seems objective is when the masses like it :p

^Except the term good itself is subjective as well since the value of what is considered good is based on the culture, and times. A loner characters like Squall would mistify a tribal society who exists by team work alone. As this thread has shown, considering many people can't agree on the qualifications for what constitutes as good writing, I would say we're still in the realm of subjectivity. :p

Ms. smarty pants with her expensive words.. xD

WK I concede that point. :P